RAIN RFID Deployed in High-Speed Production Machines: Aspects of Cycle Time
Published on March 16th, 2020 by Juho Partanen

中文版 Chinese version As RAIN RFID matures both technologically and businesswise, tagging requires scalable and flexible processes. I recently heard James Goodland, RAIN RFID Solutions Manager at NXP stating: “Going forward, the RAIN-ability of an item will be more likely integral to product design, rather than just added on an item” This implies a steady flow of new players and end-users getting into our industry, and the RAIN technology vendors need to be ready to support and help them out. Beginning with this, the first of blog series with NXP® Semiconductors, Voyantic will address technical issues that should be considered when adopting RA... Read more →

Optimizing Counting Reliability With Well-Designed Reader Zoning
Published on February 21st, 2020 by Teemu Ainasoja

中文版 Chinese version At RFID&WIoT Tomorrow 2019, Erik van Noort from Avery Dennison stopped by a Voyantic booth. He introduced a recently launched ShieldSense™ RFID blocking material. The material is for reader zoning and aimed to help system integrators in building better RAIN RFID systems. After sharing some ideas, we decided to write an article explaining the reader zoning and how to use Voyantic Tagformance to check not only if the zoning works, but how well the zoning works. In this piece, we introduce the ShieldSense™ material with the Tagformance test results. What Is Reader Zoning? Reader zoning is a common cha... Read more →

RAIN Man's Letter to Santa 2019
Published on December 20th, 2019 by Juho Partanen

中文版 Chinese version Dear Santa, It’s great to start a letter by recognizing that 2019 has again been a truly astonishing year. Not only the tide of RAIN business has been positive, but also the talent pool is headed in the right direction. Take an example, Mr. Sipi Savolainen, a veteran of UPM, Smartrac, and Walki, made a 1-year detour to now find himself back in RAIN business at StoraEnso. We’ve also been fortunate to hire new talents to further expand our own team in Finland. 2019 Cleared Many Issues off the Slate In my letter to you a year ago I called f... Read more →

NFC-Powered Storytelling — A New Opportunity for Printing Companies
Published on October 22nd, 2019 by Teemu Ainasoja

The Finns drink more coffee than anyone else in the world. If you read more, you’ll see what it has to do with NFC.

In the past year, I have given half a dozen presentations aimed to label printers and converters considering entry to smart label manufacturing. Just recently I introduced RAIN RFID to a group of printing professionals from Thailand and elsewhere in East Asia and South-East Asia in ASPT 2019 popup event in Bangkok. Many printing companies are thinking about how to replace declining ink-on-paper business, and smart labels are a good option popup.

NFC Encoding With Ensurance
Published on August 27th, 2019 by Jukka Voutilainen

中文版 Chinese version NFC (Near Field Communication) seems to be in a positive growth phase at the moment. One reason for the positive trend is Apple’s gradual opening of NFC in their mobile phones, which means that soon nearly every smart phone in the market will be equipped with NFC capabilities. And it’s about time; the NFC Forum has been advocating the technology for the last 15 years. In the RFID industry, NFC is often thought of as rebranding and repackaging of several HF RFID technologies that have been around for decades. However, the most valuable thing about NFC is the abst... Read more →

NFC Tapping - Smartphone Performance Comparison
Published on July 17th, 2019 by Teemu Ainasoja

中文版 Chinese version I recently visited an NFC forum meeting where I listened to industry presentations and discussed with many NFC industry experts. User experience, user expectation, and physical level interoperability of various NFC devices came up frequently. This prompted me to finish this article, a draft version was written already while ago. I tested a few smartphones for NFC tapping user-friendliness and dug a bit deeper on the factors affecting the user experience. Three NFC Application Types When I think of NFC, I think of three very different application types and different experiences with them. Smart card: Think of a hotel ... Read more →

Radio Equipment Directive Safeguards RAIN RFID Users and Vendors
Published on June 24th, 2019 by Juho Partanen

中文版 Chinese version RED Puts Accountability to RAIN RFID Component Vendors RED is the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU and it applies to all radio equipment that’s used in Europe. This directive was passed already in 2014 but at first there was a bit of uncertainty of how it exactly works concerning RAIN RFID. Then the ETSI EN 302 208 standard was updated to v.3.1.1. in 2016, which already addresses both the lower and upper ETSI bands – well done Brussels! That standard document put clarity into how RED is enforced concerning RAIN, and that RAIN component vendors are accountable. RED Looks After the Interests of RAIN Vendo... Read more →

Using TIPP Tagged Item Performance Protocol Outside Retail
Published on May 2nd, 2019 by Teemu Ainasoja

RAIN RFID is being adopted increasingly in several industries such as automotive manufacturing, healthcare, and pharma. Because of the growing number of implementations, there is an increasing need for a solution that helps to scale up the implementations. One of the bottlenecks seems to be specifying RAIN tag performance in a way that enables the use of tags from several manufacturers in a system. Need for performance specification or for a method to classify tags comes up more and more frequently in industry meetings. The good news is that pioneering industries have solved these questions earlier, and there are working solutions ready for adoption.

RFID Journal Live! 2019: Nothing New – and That’s Good
Published on April 5th, 2019 by Jukka Voutilainen

I think this was my 11th time at the RFID Journal Live! show. For me the show is mostly about meeting a lot of customers and partners during a highly effective couple of days. The number of exhibitors seems to be going down, as is the number of people visiting the exhibition. At the same time, we are seeing less and less significant, new technical advancements at the show. Nevertheless, I think there is a valuable insight to be found: RFID is business as usual!

Future-proofing RAIN Connectivity
Published on March 14th, 2019 by Jukka Voutilainen

The RAIN RFID market has been growing nicely throughout the latest years. The latest news is that last year a total of 15.4 billion RAIN ICs were sold – and we are nicely on track for more than 20 billion in 2020. At the same time, the market penetration is still very low, so there is plenty of room to grow. We can already see 100 billion tags a year in the horizon. Then maybe another ten more years, and we will be at 1 trillion. However, several things in our thinking will need to change for that to happen.

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